Water or more | interactive installation

"Water or more" is my recent interactive installation, which is also my MFA thesis project. Inspired by the reflection of ‘water’ from literature, poems, and films, my thesis will create different forms of interactive graphic of water to reflect water’s poetic imaginary. Thundering rains, toppling waterfalls, flowing rivers, droplets of scattered dew, and trickles of melting ice are not only ways to describe the many facets of water, they have been used by writers’ and artists’ imaginations to describe the wide-ranging emotions of human existence. Humans are indeed 60% water so it is unsurprising that in learning about water, we learn more about ourselves and the collective human condition. The goal of the project is to explore how to optimize space, combine the real and virtual, and to provide the audience with an immersive experience. In this installation, audience members’ bodily motions will be tracked by a sensor, and the water effects respond and reflect their movements.

I built a partnership with Courtney Liu (MFA Dance candidate at Duke) where our thesis work is shown side-by-side with some collaborative elements. The dancer's body moves will be tracked by Microsoft Azure Kinect, which is a camera employing the use of artificial intelligence sensors for computer vision, and be passed to Touch Designer, which is a software for building real-time multimedia program, and the water effects responding to the dancer will be projected to the surrounding walls of the space. Thus, working with dancers will present the combination of sparkling, flowing, and hydro-propelled body movements with the interactive water flow. This interactive installation experience will be a presentation of the ‘human’ and ‘water’ spiritual connection.

The performance was presented at March 2021 and the interactive installation was exhibited from May 7th.